Cutty gave him an admiring look. “I got a guy so good with Photoshop, he can make it look like Ruddy beheaded her if we want.”
“Wait. Wait,” the D.A. said. He seemed mostly upset that this wasn’t his idea, because when everyone did what he asked—took a moment to wait, wait—he didn’t say anything for a long time. “Okay,” he finally nodded. “I see it. But I still need money to exchange hands.”
“I like the bank as the location for that,” Cutty suggested. “Obviously, he’s got money there.”
“Lot of people, though,” Strickland noted.
“Yeah, but every employee is behind bulletproof glass. And this guy thinks he’s going to stay bank president, be Traverse City’s most eligible bachelor,” Cutty pointed out. “He’s not going to queer that deal by opening fire on my people. We put a couple of our guys in the lobby, messing with deposit slips. Ruddy shows Blanchard the pictures. Once the money is handed over, we’ll walk right in.”
“We could get shot,” Alan fretted.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“This time of year, no one would notice Ruddy wearing a vest underneath his coat,” Strickland chimed in. I had wondered when he was going to sneak the weather into the conversation.
“All right. We fake the pictures right now. Get the victim and her daughter into protective custody. Tonight we’ll post some plainclothes at the house, make sure Blanchard isn’t so stupid as to do a creepy-crawly to check on McCann’s handiwork. Next morning, we go in, Ruddy makes the deal, gets the cash,” D.A. Darrell concluded, as if it was all his inspiration.
“All for no reward,” I agreed sunnily.
Both Strickland and Cutty turned a glare on the D.A., who managed to bite off any retort he had been planning to make. Group therapy.
“What about the guy? Jimmy Growe?” Cutty asked.
Strickland knew of my relationship with Jimmy, and glanced in my direction.
“In my opinion, you should just leave Jimmy out of it,” I said. “Have Alice call him at the Black Bear and make up some reason she won’t see him for a couple of days. A mother-daughter thing. Jimmy’s not … He’s not the best actor, and honestly, he’s not particularly good with secrets, either.”
“So you do know him,” Cutty observed.
“He’s my best friend.”
“Is it true? Do you know, then? I mean, the affair. Is your friend sleeping with Alice Blanchard?” Strickland asked.
I sighed. “Yes, it’s true.”
Strickland nodded, his mouth set in a line. I wonder if he was thinking of his own extramarital fling, and the damage it had wrought in his own life.
“That his cell phone, as far as you can tell?” D.A. Darrell asked.
I didn’t see why that mattered, but I pulled it out and looked at it. “Yeah.”
Cutty held out her hand, and I gave it to her. “We’ll get screenshots of the threatening messages.”
“It’s a good thing she’s on this. You can tell: There won’t be any screw-ups with her in charge,” Alan praised.
I yawned, tired though it wasn’t yet noon. By my calculations, Claude and Wilma were probably just over Illinois. If there was a car waiting to meet them when they landed, the deal was on.
“We’re all set,” Cutty stated decisively.
“No,” I responded. “We’re not all set.”
Everyone glared at me. I was accustomed to being unpopular, so I just gave them a mild look back.
“How are we not all set?” Cutty asked me in a controlled and gentle tone.
“You heard Blanchard say he can fix my tickets? Porterfield’s been trying to harass me out of business. Now you’ve got the perpetrator of a murder-for-hire scheme on tape, saying he’s in bed with the sheriff on shady dealings. The thing with the boat? It wasn’t just prostitutes—Porterfield and Blanchard brought in a card shark to fleece their friends. I want Porterfield investigated, and I damn sure want these tickets taken care of. Every single one of them is bogus.”
It was quiet in the room, and then, one by one, everyone turned to look at D.A. Darrell. His eyes widened. “You’re fucking kidding me,” he said.
“Everything on the tape is going to come out as evidence anyway,” Strickland soothed. “Don’t you want to get ahead of that? What would it look like if, after hearing the tape, you left Ruddy twisting in the wind on all those tickets?”
“Jesus, Darrell,” Cutty interjected, her patience wearing out, “can we get past this petty crap and nail us a killer?”
Darrell Hughes looked at me, his expression flat. “All right,” he finally agreed. “You got those tickets with you?”
* * *
I could tell Strickland wanted to talk to me, so I dawdled, pretending to be doing paperwork in my truck, as a big white van came in and the cops loaded all their equipment into it. Strickland walked down to the frozen lake and peered at it, drinking coffee out of a paper cup. Finally it was just the two of us there at the ferry landing. It was, I reflected, a lonely, forlorn place. The ferry captain, a woman named Toni, was off in Florida, I’d heard.
Alan was respectfully silent. He knew exactly where we were, and even if Lisa Marie Walker didn’t go into the lake with me, this was still the place where my entire life got derailed.
Strickland came back up to the parking lot and slid into the repo truck next to me.
“Spring still feels a long way off,” he commented.
“Yeah, but in six months it’ll be winter again.”
“Pretty ballsy move, asking for the hotel instead of the money.”
“All’s well that ends well,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe. Still a lot of things that could go wrong between now and when you walk into his office at the bank.”
“I guess so.”
“I’d appreciate it if, in the future, you clued me in when you’re thinking of going off book.”
“All right.”
He gazed at me, approval in those steely eyes. I understood he wasn’t really complaining—he knew I’d made the right call. He just had to say something for the record so I didn’t take him too far off the reservation with me. “Phil Struder. That’s the Shantytown guy’s name.” He apparently couldn’t bring himself to say mayor.
“Struder,” I repeated.
“His family called in a missing persons report on him around the first of the month. Said he didn’t come home from the bar. He lives with his daughter and her family; his wife’s been dead a long time.”
“Missing, or run away?” Alan wanted to know.
“Any theories on where he went?” I asked.
“No. Except that his car was ticketed and towed for sitting right there in the lot down near where the Beaver Island ferry parks in the summer.”
“Huh,” I said, processing it. “Right by the Ferry Bar.”
“So, why the interest?”
I briefly explained what I had found out about Nina Otis. Strickland’s expression was entirely impassive—I couldn’t decide if he thought I was crazy, or thought I was really on to something. “I sort of have had Phil … Struder … in mind as a suspect. Seems awfully convenient that he hears I want to talk to him and vanishes that day. But I’m not so sure, now that I hear he abandoned his car. I don’t know how you get out of here without a car, this time of year.”
Strickland rubbed his chin. “I haven’t told anyone about what you’ve been looking into, but maybe Cutty and I will sit down for a cup of coffee after we’ve taken down Blanchard. Like you said, I’m building a few favors.”
“Ask him if he knows if she is seeing anyone,” Alan suggested preposterously. My psychosis was acting completely crazy.
We went our separate ways. I decided to hit Darlene’s for breakfast, but sternly told Alan I was not going to get a cinnamon roll, that it was time for me to quit. When I got there, I ordered eggs and bacon and a cinnamon roll.
“I thought you were going to skip it this time.”
“I saw they were down to just one left, and I panicked
,” I explained.
“You said you wanted to lose five pounds,” he reminded me.
“That’s why I wasn’t going to have a cinnamon roll,” I agreed logically. I had my phone out and pressed against my face so I wouldn’t draw undue attention, talking to myself in Darlene’s. “So what in the world were you thinking about Cutty Wells, Alan? I’m not going to ask her out on a date, for God’s sake.”
He was quiet, and I had a sudden insight. “Wait, do you think you’re going to call her? Like, when I’m asleep?”
“Do you know how lonely it can get being me? There was something about the way she looked at us. What would be the harm?”
“The harm? Have you not only lost your body but your mind, too? She was looking at me, not us, and even if I’m asleep, it would still be Ruddy McCann chatting her up. What do you think, you’re going to date her, fall in love, get married? What am I supposed to tell your daughter? Don’t worry, honey; I’m asleep?”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with a little fantasy,” he whined.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You have a fantasy about a voice in your head, and the next thing you know, it’s ruining your relationships. Now, I know for a fact you’ve been doing a little cleaning at night—”
“A little?” he interrupted incredulously. “Do you ever wipe your counters? Sweep your floor? Bother to mate your socks?”
“Again with the socks. Jesus,” I snapped. “Look, you can get up and play housewife if it makes you feel better, but that’s it. No computer dating. No taking Cutty Wells Zumba dancing. Got it?”
“You’ve got someone. I’ve got no one,” Alan mourned softly. “Sometimes a man needs a woman, if only to cuddle with.”
“That’s what Jake is for.”
Alan was moodily silent for most of the rest of breakfast. “Can we talk about the mayor’s disappearance?” he finally suggested.
“Sure. He could still be our man, but I don’t get the abandoned car.”
“Think of where it was found. Right there at the Ferry Bar.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “But I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“I wonder if the mayor was in the bar the night he disappeared? Maybe someone came along and helped him the way someone helped Lisa Marie.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, taking a last swig of coffee. “Let’s go talk to Rogan and ask him.”
27
Here for the Money
Kermit texted me that Jake had done his morning business. Actually, what he said was that Jake had defected in the yard, but I got the idea. I’d been up for five hours at that point, but for my dog the workday was just getting started. Katie texted me she had gone into the office. My family thus secure and my stomach heavy and happy, I cruised past the Ferry Bar, but it wasn’t awake yet, so I took a drive over to Gaylord and got into an argument with a man who said he didn’t need to make car payments because his installments came out of his paycheck automatically. I concurred that had previously been the case, but in October he lost his job over a disagreement with his employers over whether he did any actual work. No job, no paycheck; no paycheck, no automatic deductions. This was too much math for my customer, who sought to prevail in the disagreement by virtue of his superior belligerence. When I seemed unfazed by his anger, he sought to intimidate me by threatening to call his lawyer, and while he was inside his house making good on his dire promise, I hooked up his vehicle and drove away. By the time I dumped the thing at the repo lot, I had run out of energy—too little sleep, too many carbohydrates.
I went home to nap but found it difficult to get sleep because my dog wasn’t on the bed. Alan passed right out, so I lay there by myself and thought about how different my life would be if I had just looked in the backseat of my car and noticed that Lisa Marie had gotten out. Maybe I would have gone looking for her. Maybe that one little change would have been enough for me not to drive down that ramp to the ferry landing and off into the icy waters of the channel. But even if I had gone into the drink, I would have told everyone I was by myself. They might not have believed me, but they would have had to check out my story. The cops might have located a girl on a bicycle, a girl who saw a man help Lisa Marie Walker after she got out of my car. And we’d have the semen, proving it was not me who had sex with her, and maybe, if Alan’s theory was correct, the killer’s DNA would be in a database somewhere.
I gave up on my nap when Dr. Schaumburg rang my cell phone. He told me he had a letter from the court. “Your probation is being lifted,” he told me sadly.
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“Ruddy, I strongly urge you not to see this as an excuse to discontinue treatment. You have a controllable condition, but it requires close supervision. Your medication needs to be monitored consistently.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I observed agreeably. “Nice talking to you, Bob.”
“Wait, please. Some side effects are unavoidable, but they can be reduced. It’s imperative you stick with the regimen I prescribed. I’m your doctor, Ruddy. Whatever the circumstances that brought us together, my role is to help you get well.”
“And you’ve done a fantastic job. Thanks,” I told him sincerely. “I’m all better now.” When I said good-bye, all I heard in return was dismayed silence, so I disconnected the call.
My call with Katie was a lot more fun. We decided to see each other the next night, and I promised I had some interesting things to tell her—namely, that by then we would have gone to the bank and arrested Blanchard for the crime of hiring a repo man to kill his wife.
I stopped by the Black Bear and chatted with Jimmy, who told me Alice Blanchard and their daughter, Vicki, had gone to visit Alice’s sister. “I didn’t even know she had a sister,” he confessed.
“You still worried about her soon-to-be-ex-husband?”
Jimmy shrugged, running a hand through his black hair. “She says his lawyer sent a pretty nasty letter, which she gave to her lawyer.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “I think things are going to be okay,” I told him.
“I still can’t find my cell phone.”
“Something tells me it’ll turn up.”
Just then my own cell phone chimed, and I put it on speakerphone when I saw who it was, gesturing to Becky to join Jimmy and me at the bar.
“Ruddy!”
“Hi there, Claude. You and Wilma make it okay?”
“It’s seventy-seven degrees here! Can you believe that? In February!”
Becky leaned in. “Are you at your hotel?” she asked, glancing at me.
“Our hotel!” he gushed. Then there was a loud rustling and a loud squawk from Claude.
“Ruddy? It’s Wilma. This place is amazing. You should see our hotel room!”
“I wanted to tell him, dammit!” I heard Claude complain in the background.
“Everyone is here,” I told her, and they all chorused hellos.
Wilma responded with a giddy squeal. “Wait, hear this? Hear this?” she asked.
What we heard was Claude telling her to give him back the phone.
“That’s the ocean, guys! Our room is right on the ocean!”
“Tell him we’ve got our own refrigerator!” Claude ordered.
“It is so wonderful, you wouldn’t believe it,” she continued. “We got upgraded when we landed; there was a man waiting for us at the airport.”
“Two TVs!” Claude bellowed.
Becky was regarding me suspiciously. I gave her an innocent shrug.
“It’s the happiest day of my life,” Wilma told me.
“If you’re not going to tell him anything, then let me talk,” Claude insisted.
There was a noise that sounded like Wilma had taken the phone and hit him with it. Then he was back. We agreed that he should stop talking to us and go have some fun, and rang off.
“You’re not going to claim any credit for the hotel, are you?” Alan asked.
I didn’t want to answer him in front of
people, but I figured he knew the answer.
I wasn’t really sure why, but Claude and Wilma, with their goofy, maladroit lives, meant an awful lot to me.
So Blanchard had made good on his end of the bargain. And, I didn’t care what D.A. Darrell thought; he had definitely delivered something of value.
* * *
At ten the next morning I met Cutty and her team in a parking lot in Acme, a small town on the outskirts of Traverse City. Alan was awake and nervous. The cops had the same panel van. I was introduced to two plainclothes officers who would pretend to be customers in the bank, both of them women, both of them looking like the sort of law professionals you simply don’t want to mess with, stern and tough and strong. I assumed Alan found them sexy, too, but he didn’t comment. I was given the hat and the gum and a file folder with several photographs of Alice Blanchard lying on her bedroom floor, dark blood pooled at her head. The photos were impressively realistic and gruesome. The Photoshop guy was almost too good—the head wound was pretty graphic.
“Where is she really?” I asked Cutty curiously.
She smiled at me warmly. Was Alan right? Did she think I was attractive? Why did I care? I chastised myself. “She and her daughter are someplace safe—don’t worry,” she assured me. “Okay, this is a little different circumstance than the last meet, because he’s gotten what he needs from you. Now you’re just a liability. Watch his hands,” she lectured me. “You don’t like what’s going on, same drill as last time, say not good. We hear that, we’ll be in that office in five seconds. You drop to the floor. We’ll wait to send you in until all the civilians are out and then we’ll block anyone else from entering—the only people in there will be mine. When he gives you the money, don’t count it, but makes sure it’s cash. That’s when you say bingo.”
“Right, don’t settle for travel coupons or something,” D.A. Darrell interjected. Strickland and Cutty both gave him a look. He held up his hands and gave a false smile. “All right. And say something for the mic, like, I did what you wanted and shot her in the head, so I’m here for my money.”
“You really need it to be that explicit?” Cutty demanded, looking exasperated.